


Sepulchral

by allusionaries



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Mentions of characters both dead and alive, Sadstuck, TW: cutting/self-harm, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allusionaries/pseuds/allusionaries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sepulchral (n.): Of or pertaining to a tomb or burial; hollow, deep, and funereal.</p><p>Your name is Karkat Vantas, and your once-a-sanctuary is now your prison-cell. What will you do?<br/>===> Equipt Sickles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sepulchral

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory trigger warnings for self-harm/self-mutilation (aka 'cutting'.)  
> Written for nobody in particular. More or less, a vent piece.  
> Un-Beta'd, so forgive me for spelling and gramatical errors.

And God, does it burn.

It burns like an iron, white-hot and blinding, but you brand yourself regardless. The pain you feel lessens with each gentle _plip, plip_ of your blood, shocking red droplets that stain the white of the towel you managed to swipe – probably from Equius’s stash. Not like anyone else on this goddamn meteor ever bothered to hoard the things so meticulously, after all.

You hiss but it is the kind of pleasure, because as you drain this miniscule amount of blood from your body, so does your anger. Your anger and sadness, that deep-rooted melancholy that twisted your gut in a constant chokehold, drains. It drains like someone pulled the plug, and although you know it is still there – the roots have already taken stance, after all – it has been clipped.

You don’t even bother rolling your sleeve back up as it begins to droop, the hem still plenty a distance from the seven – you counted, precisely seven – red slits that cover your wrist in a neat row. Your skin stains an off-pink, the color diluted when put into contact with your grey, grey skin, puckered all around the fresh wounds, scarred with the old already.

The world around you is quiet. The room you had claimed as your own is silent, stagnant. No longer does the meteor thrum with life. It was never a home, but it resembles a cell more than it ever has, now. Even the Posters you managed to recreate and salvage to decorate this little space strike you as condescending. It almost makes you want to rip them down.

But you don’t.

Mostly because, as fucked up as it is, you miss your home. And these posters and DVDs are really all you have left. So you make do with what you have, and suck it up, because weakness was not a trait of the favorable.

So you sit on the shitty – what did the humans call it? Bed? – yes, that. You sit on the shitty bed that Rose had alchemized, insisting each troll at least try it. It might not have been a recuperacoon, but it was better than sleeping on a pile of honking horns. Even if the blankets always ended up on the floor, or entangling your legs in a death-trap.

The coverings Rose had also produced to keep the bed warmer and cleaner (her words, not yours) were dirty. Or, as dirty as a troll who refused to ever move could make things. They smelled like you, you guessed. The only noticeable stains being the several droplets of rusted-over red – so painstakingly close to Aradia’s natural color, god _damn_ it all. They were dry and crusted and didn’t bother you, so you never made a big deal out of washing them like Kanaya did with hers.

You had a feeling that if you asked for Rose to wash them (she was the only one who really knew how, after all. You only knew how to wash clothes, as was required for Alternian lifestyle. You didn’t have these long scrolls of soft fabric called blankets or sheets.) she would question the blood, and you’d have to lie. You were a good liar, but at this point in the game, and your life, you were sick of the lying. They knew your blood color. That secret was, unanimously decided, the worst-kept-secret in every game session ever.

But the fact that you took your sickles to your wrists to drain these feelings of anger and uselessness…

Well, that was a secret you were not yet ready to give up just yet.


End file.
